Light (Sequel to Red Rattlesnake)
by Clarice Sansnom
Summary: Akihito tries to recover from the violence he was shaken by, but the images stuck in his head torment him. Will he be able to forget? Will Asami?
1. Chapter 1

Inspired by Eric Whitacre´s "Lux Aurumque"

* * *

The tall figure slumped down the dark staircase. Akihito couldn´t move. Heat and freezing cold battled inside his chest, he only looked. He didn´t dare moving down. The body did no longer move. It took only one blink of an eye to make the shaking body scream to his owner to get out of there. Akihito followed the command, grabbed his camera bag and ran down the stairs. With a jump, he crossed over the body, only to freeze again momentarily to turn around and take a terrified look at the blood on the floor. Had he stepped into it? He had no strength to move his feet to look at his shoe soles.

As he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the golden eyes, only for a minute, then they were gone. "What have you done?", they asked.

 _Get out. Run._

He turned and ran.

With a jolt, Akihito sat up. The light blinded him, he felt cold hands grab onto him, pushed them away in panic, screamed out, moved away. He fell down to a sticky carpet, hit his elbow on something hard and tried to move away, only his body wouldn´t move.

"Akihito!" Asami´s voice rang through the cold hot air.

"No! Nothing!", he replied hastily, still trying to get his legs to carry him away.

"Akihito, look at me! It´s me!"

Finally, he could make out a face.

Asami slowly knelt down to the terrified boy.

"Akihito", he said calmly, reaching out with his palm upside, but not touching the fragile boy. "You are safe. It was a dream. It was just a dream."

He watched as his young lover focused his eyes on him, struggling to return into reality. He didn´t dare to move, the boy was already afraid enough. He felt his chest tighten at the sight.

"May I touch you?", he carefully asked.

Silence. Only the ragged breathing from Akihito´s open mouth. He blinked insecurely. Asami felt him drift in open space. His upper arms tensed and reached forward to catch the trembling boy.

With infinite tenderness Asami closed his arms around the body. He felt Akihito shiver in his arms, tense up and let go again, his skin wet with sweat and hot in fever. After a few moments, Akihito´s head dropped onto his shoulder.

"Cold", he whispered out.

"You have a slight fever", Asami answered, holding the naked body even closer, and starting to pull it up.

He followed his partner´s pained gaze to the slightly blood stained bed sheets and reacted quickly. He´d seen the photos from the scene, Akihito must have been terrified, blood stains were the last thing he needed to see right now. After all, he did not watch people die with split skulls on a regular basis. The image must have haunted him through his painful nightmare.

As he set down the hot frame on his own side of the bed, Akihito grabbed onto his hand in desperation. With only a quick swing, Asami pushed away the bloody sheet and towel, onto the floor, only to not have the boy look at it. Engulfed in his scent, he would surely go back to sleep within minutes. He lay down next to Akihito and covered them with the duvet, in hopes the boy would stop shivering soon.

The shaking hand reached out to Asami´s chest and caressed him with its palm, sliding into the bathrobe and onto his shoulder. Instantly getting the message, he untied the robe, stripped it away and moved even closer to Akihito.

"Want to tell me about that dream?", Asami asked cautiously, but with a reassuring tone.

"It was just a dream", Akihito answered sleepily.

He couldn´t possibly tell Asami.

"You shouldn´t blame yourself for anything, Akihito. Anything you did last night was only a reaction to violence. This is not your fault."

"I shouldn´t have run away. I shouldn´t have come back here. Asami, I am so sorry."

"Do I have to repeat myself about you apologising?"

Akihito started sobbing uncontrollably into his lover´s chest. His body tensed up in reflex when he felt hands running up his spine. He needed to actively tell his body to relax. Why was this so different? He had been raped before. He had been taken by other men before. Why could he not stand his lover now caressing him? When the hands reached up to hold the spot over the collar bone, Akihito´s body finally really panicked. He shoved the tall man away instantly, who let go immediately.

"What´s wrong? Akihito?"

He needed to speak it out. But it hurt so much.

In torment Akihito cried out: "He held me there! He pushed me down. It hurts so much."

"This is not your fault, Akihito."

"I shouldn´t have run away."

"Stop!", his lover commanded. It shook Akihito to his bones. "I cannot watch you fall apart like this, Akihito. I can do many things, but not this. Not standing by while you torture yourself about something that is not your fault. And even if it was more than just an accident, it was only a reaction. You didn´t do this, Akihito, and I know that. Don´t let yourself slip away. I can´t watch it."

Within seconds, the urge to cry had gone. He really couldn´t do this to Asami. He needed to give back control. As he gazed into the golden eyes, Akihito slowly crawled back into his lover´s arms, letting them surround him, envelope him, comfort him.

"Make me forget, Asami."

"I will. Don´t worry. Go back to sleep, I´ll hold you if the nightmare comes back. You have a fever, you need to rest."

Rest. What a wonderful feeling. Rest.

When Akihito´s restless eyes had finally closed, Asami noticed the dark spots around his shoulder and neck. How could he not have seen them earlier? The events had shaken him too, had taken away some of his ability to read through situations. He took a deep breath. The sun made his lover´s hair sparkle with light and gold.


	2. Chapter 2

Inspired by Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor, IV. Adagietto (very slow)

* * *

Shaking away the drowsy feeling of a sweat through night, Akihito left Asami for him to still get some sleep. He must have had a very long day, dark shadows lingered under his closed eyes. As long as the alarm wouldn´t wake him, Akihito would make no attempt to. Asami had a long day ahead, and he did too. What day was it actually?

As he passed the mirror in the bathroom, his eyes were drawn towards a white patch on his side. What had he done there? Had he fallen somewhere? Had Asami done that?

He pulled away the tape to inspect whatever there was. It did hurt when he moved. And something else did. Had Asami been that rough last night?

A small cut came to show underneath, though it seemed to be quite deep, it had not healed in completely yet. There was blood, actually. Fresh blood. How deep was this thing?

Akihito brought up his hand to touch it. It hurt but Akihito didn´t care nor did he feel it that much anyway. Moving his fingers around, he watched the injury in the mirror, in a rather curious manner, actually.

Why did he not remember how this came about? How much must he have drunken last night? Had he been out with the guys?

"Akihito!", Asami´s distraught voice cut through the fine thread of his thoughts.

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

"Akihito, what are you doing?"

Only now, Akihito realised that it actually hurt, whatever he was doing there. He looked at his index finger, dug deeply into his bleeding side, then realised he had pushed it in there. Why?

He pulled it out. Looked at his blood on the hand. Looked at Asami. He didn´t feel too good. Slowly, he blinked.

Asami pulled the hand away from his body, Akihito still looking at it, trying to make sense of it all.

"Akihito, it´s not your fault, don´t hurt yourself", Asami said reassuringly.

He took a new patch and a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the cupboard and started to dip a piece of cotton in it.

"What is not my fault?", Akihito asked quietly.

Asami didn´t answer. He seemed too hung up with the wound. With one hand he held up Akihito´s blood stained hand and pressed the cotton to the wound with the other.

Completely unprepared for the sting, Akihito drew back in reflex. He broke away from the hand holding him, covering the wound and falling to his knees. As he felt his body jerk forward, the sensation seemed to make his spine rip away from his ribcage and right through the skin of his back into the air.

Deeply breathing, he felt nausea burn from deep inside his gut and turned towards the toilet to vomit. The stinging corroded his body with every constriction of his torso.

As he looked down, he realised there had been nothing to vomit, he had only thrown up stomach acid.

A warm hand reached under his forehead and upon his shoulder. Asami. He had been here before, he had done this before, he had felt his side sting before and he had felt the cold tiles on his knees before. Yesterday. Asami had cleaned him up in here yesterday. When he closed his eyes to remember, he gasped for air. There it was, the horrifying face on the inside of his eyelids.

The vomiting had stopped, so Akihito tried to stand to get out, but his legs failed to carry him and he broke down in tremors and tears. For a moment he only felt his shoulder muscles tense up, before the first deep sob drew into his lungs and left out a wretched cry into the silence of the bathroom.

As if trying to catch himself he held his hands in front if his face, fingers claw-like in the air just before his eyes. He couldn´t see them, his eyes were pressed shut in the tears.

Soft palms caressed his cheek and took his left hand away to feel Asami´s face, gently.

"Make me forget, Asami! Take me!", Akihito begged his lover, clinging onto the soft bathrobe.

"You are hurt, Akihito. You need to cry now."

And he did. Gods, he did.

* * *

"I didn´t intend to hurt myself, you know", Akihito said into the blue after about an hour of silence.

"Then what did you do?"

The tall man sat on the couch, with the younger in his lap, curling up as closely as he could. The scent and warmth of his lover was the only thing that kept his mind in the room right now. He had stopped crying eventually, not because he had run out of grief but because he had run out of tears. Asami had put him back together, and fed him breakfast, and sat him down on the couch, and taken every decision. And Akihito was so grateful. He owed him an explanation. But what explanation?

"I don´t really know. I don´t remember."

Then he paused and tried to think, rethink what he had thought.

"I think I thought I´d better not wake you, you looked exhausted. And I couldn´t remember the night before until you held me when I puked. I just, ... I just ... wanted to see what was under the patch, I couldn´t remember. I guess I wished I could just loose the memories, get rid of them."

He pulled his knees even closer and turned his head further in to breathe through the fabric of Asami´s polo shirt. For the first time in hours he felt safe.

"That´s the thing about memories, Akihito. You can´t just shut them away."

"I wish I could. Along with all the bad feelings."

"But if you shut away bad feelings, you shut away the good ones as well. The is no light without darkness."

 _There is no you without me. There is no me without you._

Asami shook the pain away. What if he had lost his light yesterday? What would have become of him? After all, Akihito was what kept him alive these days. He would have burned into ashes and crumbled away after that. This boy lay there, miserable and hurt, in his lap, and had the power over almost everything in this city, and would never realise it. He held such great power with so little effort, so little thinking, only by being him, only by drawing Asami in with every breath.

"I can´t have you hurt, Akihito. Promise me you will never again hurt yourself."

"I wasn´t-" Ah, there it was the fire in these hazel eyes, the light inside this beautiful soul, it hadn´t gone out, it was still ready to fight at the very chance of trouble.

Asami pulled him into a kiss, deep and demanding, not too rough given the circumstances, to find Akihito resist the darkness for a moment and finally give in with a soft moan. The thin hand pulled his collar down and drew his soul away, and he sucked it back in, along with everything Akihito wanted to get rid of. He would pull it all away from him, take it onto his own shoulders, only to keep the light intact to nurtured him.

And as he let go after an eternity of bathing in the light, the hazel eyes gave away the promise freely, he would stay with him, forever, his eyes told the words that his mouth would never be allowed to say, because this boy was too proud, he was too much the fire, only burning through wood and still pulling away into the sky in pride.

They only looked it each other. For moments and moments of pure passion of each other, until Akihito could not take it any more and demandingly ran his hand under Asami´s shirt.

 _If you shut away bad feelings, you shut away the good ones as well._

"Make me feel good, Asami. Make me feel that I´m back here, back with you. Bring me back."

* * *

Next chapter coming in the next few days!

PLEASE REVIEW! Tell me what you think! Critics welcome!


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